“’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except… the four assholes coming in the rear in standard two-by-two cover formation.”

Remember when I said it’s really hard to find 24 good Christmas movies…yeah, really hard. But unlike the bottom of this list, Die Hard is wonderfully entertaining and does, for better or worse, show some of the better aspects of Christmas (if you use a REALLY loose definition).

After all there is the joy of opening your presents…okay it might be after you have broken into a vault to steal what’s in it, but it’s such a fun scene watching our villains open their Christmas present. And Theo does say “Merry Christmas.”

There are miracles. “It’s Christmas, Theo, it’s the time for miracles…” Just not in the form you usually expect to see them. “You ask for a miracle I give you the FBI.”

There’s even an interesting rendition of “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”

But also because in addition to the crisp and delightful action which we seldom see anymore, Hollywood having become obsessed with the evil that is the shaky-cam, this movie is just one witty joke after another. Every time you watch there is new set of jokes (the SWAT team member not being able to handle a rose thorn, the terrorist who looks around before he steals a candy bar, and the great line “I’m Agent Johnson, this is Special Agent Johnson. No relation.”). There are a myriad of jokes and moments of wit that are conveyed sometimes only by a well-timed look. If only we could go back to this instead of CGI nonsense.

This movie makes the list because there are some people who feel that any movie that even occurs at Christmas should be considered a Christmas film no matter how much the theme of the film differs from that of the actual holiday (although you could argue that our hero is acting out of love for his wife…but to say that’s a central theme is a bit of a stretch). And for that group of films there is probably no movie more entertaining than Die Hard.

And as an added bonus for the few liberals who read this blog, they blow up the NewsCorp building in this movie.